Planet maemo: category "feed:3e97844fb140de8423afbcb8ff62ccf8"

Proposed by-laws for 'Hildon Foundation'

RM Bauer has posted the latest draft of the proposed constitution of the "Hildon Foundation", the not-for-profit organisation intended to takeover management of maemo.org and the Maemo community:

"The mission of the Foundation is to promote and progress the future availability of maemo derived or inspired open source software, and related toolkits, for mobile pocketable devices. The Maemo operating system and Hildon user interface was originally developed by Nokia Corporation and used in several commercially available devices, including the N900. Most of Maemo and Hildon is currently open source software as defined by the Open Software Foundation and, as such, continues to be improved upon by a volunteer community at www.maemo.org. Nokia intends to cease its operation of www.maemo.org and has indicated a willingness to transfer it to a suitable organization."

The links below cover the original Community Council blog post; the threads on maemo-community and TMO which were automatically created from it; and the previous discussion. At the time of writing, the responses have been limited to the maemo-community mailing list.

A look back at a year of Tizen

Nathan Willis summarises Tizen's first year as the Intel & Samsung successor to MeeGo:

"Tizen's goal, like MeeGo's before it, was clearly defined as producing a baseline Linux distribution suitable for consumer electronics products: from handheld devices like tablets to more embedded-flavored-platforms like smart TV and in-vehicle systems. Samsung and LiMo added a mobile phone handset to the mix."

"The first release came in January 2012 and consisted of public Git repositories for the core OS and a "preview" of the SDK. Perhaps most notably, that release was the community's first look at how Tizen would merge in the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) graphical toolkit from LiMo and the project's HTML 5-based API for application development"

Digia acquires Qt. Now "responsible for all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia"

Digia - the company that previously obtained the commercial licensing of Qt from Nokia - has acquired the remaining portions on Qt. Digia expresses an interest in maintaining the current dual-licensing scheme (open source and commercial) and is "Committed to [a] Thriving Qt Ecosystem". "One of Digia’s key objectives with this acquisition is to improve its position within the Qt ecosystem by further strengthening Qt’s R&D capabilities and expanding its reach on many more platforms than ever before. Since Digia acquired the Qt Commercial licensing business from Nokia in March 2011, the operation has continued to be successful and has grown substantially. Digia forecasts the acquisition’s impact on its 2012 revenues to be positive. In the following years, Digia forecasts the Qt business to grow." Here's hoping Qt continues to get the level of support it deserves from Digia and the community.

Recent app developments in NemoMobile

A Talk thread on NemoMobile saw more activity last week when it was populated by posts of new applications that are undergoing development for Nemo. Highlights include qmlcalendar, contacts using gallery's picker for avatars, Tizmee Tizen compatibility layer, Conversations, Dialer, and a proof of concept QML desktop (lipstick) from Timur Kristóf. There is a lot of cool content in the thread and that particular joy from watching an open source mobile OS form into something amazing is acute, so check out the thread and revel in the awesome.

Open source replacement for Maemo Fremantle bluetooth-sysinfo package

Jonathan Wilson has made available a "package I call bt-cal which is a replacement for bluetooth-sysinfo as a way to read the bluetooth MAC address from CAL and send it to the bluetooth driver. [...] The ultimate aim is that someone will modify this and make it talk to something more standard than the /sys/devices/platform/hci_h4p/hwaddr that it talks to now (allowing the non-standard interface to be removed from kernel-power/kernel-cssu/whatever)."

Eager Maemo, MeeGo and Mer developers are encouraged to further hack on Jonathan's work.

Jolla clarifies position on "developer mode" after misinterpretation of interview comments

A mistranslation of a Finnish interview of Jolla's CEO Jussi Hurmola resulted in a great deal of FUD last week, when comments about Jolla's market positioning were taken to mean that Jolla devices would be locked down, with customers unable to flash the device or replace the kernel. Most of the furor stemmed from a SlashGear report on the IBTimes article that extrapolated from the translated comments a bit farther than was likely justified, claiming that Jolla planned "to lock down its MeeGo phone." The original IBTimes article has since been updated with clarifications from a Jolla spokesperson: "There were a couple of quotes from Jussi Hurmola about the product. I think they were translated from Finnish to English and misunderstood, or then the developer edition was left out. [...] We are however planning on creating a development version of the phone for open source community, those interested in Linux and open systems and for partners. [...] Jolla is going to release a developer edition of the device which gives full access to linux hackers and technology enthusiasts. Jolla will fully support the communities and be part of them, and wants them to be part of creating and developing our device. [...]"

Draft bylaws for non-profit entity to take over Maemo infrastructure

In a proposal on the Maemo Community mailing list, RM Bauer details a draft bylaw to change the maemo.org infrastructure that is currently provided by Nokia to a non-profit entity possibly to be named the Hildon Foundation. "In order to continue the community at www.maemo.org in the future, it will be necessary to migrate much of the infrastructure and associated elements to a new site and to establish a separate entity for that purpose. See generally http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=84933. The attached bylaws are proposed for discussion. Please note that this is primarily a legal document and this is not the appropriate place to discuss many of the issues associated with the actual migration of the community." Time will tell how the idea is received and how the obstacles will be navigated.

Ex-Nokians found Jolla Mobile to "continue Nokia's excellent work on MeeGo-based smartphones"

The spirits of the downtrodden stalwarts of the Maemo and MeeGo communities were uplifted Saturday by the surprising announcement of Jolla Ltd., a new mobile smartphone company formed, in part, by former Nokia employees, with the stated goal of bringing new life to MeeGo and continuing the "excellent work that Nokia started." According to the press release they've been "developing a new smartphone product and the OS since the end of 2011" and a "new smartphone using this MeeGo based OS will be revealed later this year." No detailed specifics about the stack have been announced beyond it being based on the Mer Core and Qt, with Jolla providing their own UI on top.

Estel deselected as Council chair; discussions on legal entity

In the Community Council meeting on Friday, the three members of the council in attendance (Craig Woodward, Niel Nielsen, RM Bauer) removed Piotr Jawidzyk as chair of the current council, and will discuss a replacement between themselves this week. Piotr, of course, remains a member of the council; but it seems the rest of the council decided to act after "confrontational" discussions with the community, often in light of the concern regarding the council awarding Community Awards' devices to themselves. In introducing the matter, Craig - as secretary - said: "I think one clear item that has been agreed on in general is that Estel_ has been a bit harsher than most of us would like in recent dealings w/ the community."

"There have been calls, by at least 3 Council now in as many weeks, for his removal as chair. Given that Estel has expressed he was willing to give up chair if Council agreed on the matter (see June 8th minutes) I propose we take such a vote, if not this meeting than next."

Other issues discussed in the meeting included potential resolutions to the "firestorm"; community OBS, and the servers on which they run; and moving to a "self-sustaining" legal entity.

The last item is particularly interesting, slthough it isn't clear exactly what the role and scope of this entity would be.

Migrating maemo.org to community-driven infrastructure

Part of the potential fallout from the layoffs and project reduction at Nokia is likely to be the cancellation of funding for maemo.org. This is likely to happen sooner rather than later given that maemo.org is on a 6-month contract period (currently through Nemein). Discussion about transitioning maemo.org to a community-driven infrastructure when Nokia funding is removed is ongoing on both the community mailing list and on Talk.Given the wide range of services provided by maemo.org and the cost of servers, let alone the labor to keep them running, any viable plan is likely to require the shutting down or migration of the resource intensive services (like the autobuilder).

Community Council meetings held every Friday, 18:00 UTC

Piotr Jawidzyk has publicised details of the new Maemo Community Council's meeting schedule. They are held "every Friday, 18:00 UTC, at IRC channel #maemo-meeting. Every interested Community Member is free (and welcome) to actively participate. Furthermore, after every meeting, minutes are published on Council's blog and News section of maemo.org."

Nokia closes down more software development

Meltemi, the not-so-secret, low-end, Linux-based, Qt-running platform for the "next billion" is just one of several casualties of Nokia's final confirmation of them as - more or less - a Microsoft OEM. Ars Technica's Ryan Paul wrote: "Embattled phone manufacturer Nokia has conducted another round of layoffs, reducing the company’s headcount by 10,000 employees. The company is tightening its focus and making deep cuts in areas that aren’t directly tied to its current Windows Phone strategy. In conjunction with the layoffs, Nokia has also reportedly terminated its Meltemi project. [...]"

maemo.org Coding Competition begins this week

The tradition of a community-run coding competition for Maemo and Meego devices continues this year. "Beginning Monday 11th June, and running for 3 months, new applications for Maemo and MeeGo Harmattan devices (and significant updates to existing ones) will be eligible to enter in this years competition. Whether you are an experienced developer or a beginner on your very first application, we have a category that suits you and your application! "

" Nokia has generously donated 14 N950s and 11 N9s that we will assign to the winners and runner ups across the various categories. There will also be a community bounty made up of individual donations which will also be shared out amongst the best placed entries." Entry is free, so all interested developers of all skill levels are encouraged to participate.